If he were smart, Nora thought, he too would just blame everything on the renegade High Priestess.
Lemoes was also to go to the temple in Nenaveii, the priest announced. He was young and impressionable, he had been exposed to unfortunate influences, and it was important to ensure that he was schooled in orthodox doctrine and practice. Erchkaii itself would be reseeded with properly trained clergy from Nenaveii so that heresy would not have a chance to grow again.
It’s just a power grab, Nora thought, they’re taking over Erchkaii. Given that she had effectively resigned as Erchkaii’s High Priestess twice already, she was surprised to find herself growing indignant. But the Nenaveii priest’s crack about women clergy had been grating. She thought about all the pilgrims who had come from Nenaveii because they could not be cured at the temple there.
“I am sorry,” Lemoes said, “but I must remain here.”
The older priest frowned impatiently. “It is not your choice.”
“That is true,” Lemoes agreed. “It is the will of the goddess.”
A web of purplish veins darkened the priest’s cheeks. “That is exactly the kind of dangerous blasphemy that has poisoned this place,” he said. “You have taken a vow of obedience, have you not? It’s not your place to consider the will of the goddess; you follow the direction of your superiors. You will fast until we reach Nenaveii, and there you will learn how the gods are properly honored.”
Oh, why not, Nora thought. It was twilight; oil lamps were burning throughout the room. She did a quick spell, and the flames turned inky. The room became a jungle of flickering, blue-black shadows.
The visitors from Nenaveii cried out, and then the older priest pulled himself together. “You are a magician of some repute, Lord Aruendiel,” he said. “This is one of your magical deceptions. You should be ashamed to practice such trickery on holy men.”
“I would be,” Aruendiel said. “But I had nothing to do with this.”
“You are lying.”
“Only a fool or a good swordsman would call me a liar,” Aruendiel said steadily. “Which one are you?”
From the Ghaki nobleman there came an odd noise, quickly squelched. “Let’s not get distracted by a trifling misunderstanding, Erefex,” he said to the priest. “What is more important is what we have already accomplished today.”
In the gloom, Nora could just make out that he was pulling at his mustache. “His Gracious Majesty will be pleased to know that the wench who caused all this trouble has been removed, and the temple of Erchkaii will continue its excellent works under the patronage of the Most Holy Royal Temple at Nenaveii. All very satisfactory to His Majesty,” the nobleman said. “Where the boy goes is trivial. The will of the gods should always be respected—as we always do,” he added with sudden vigor. “Praise Sisoaneer!”
Nora, taking her cue, turned the lamp flames back to a more conventional yellow.
In the restored light, the priest Erefax looked somewhat paler than before. The nobleman grinned under his mustache. “Ah! Marvelous. I would have liked to have seen that snake. How big was it, would you say?” he asked Hirizjahkinis.
“Big enough,” she said. “Are you going to tell His Majesty about it?”
“Eh.” The nobleman’s big face creased with a look of wry acumen. “He is a busy man. It depends on what he needs to hear about. A giant snake that eats criminals—well, I suppose he will want to know about that.”
After the Nenaveiians had filed out, Hirizjahkinis and Aruendiel lingered in the refectory. So did Nora, taking a seat near them. She gripped the table in front of her as a precaution, just in case the invisibility spell tried to whisk her out of their presence. The other two looked around the room, and then at each other.
Hirizjahkinis laughed. “I taught her that spell for the flames!” she said with some pride. “It is very persuasive, in the right circumstances.”
“She is fortunate that that Nenaveiian priest is no kind of magician,” Aruendiel said. “But it was a welcome sign nonetheless. Is she here, can you tell?”
Hirizjahkinis blew air out of her cheeks. “I am sure she is—but even the Kavareen cannot tell for sure. That invisibility spell is so messy, it muddles everything.”
“It’s not just a simple invisibility-silencing spell,” Aruendiel said. “There is a confusion spell that’s part of it, I’m sure, and some kind of misdirection spell.”
“Oh, tell me about it,” Nora said. “I’ve been going in circles, it feels like. Or everyone else is.” She stood up, lifted the bench she had been sitting on, and dropped it with a bang. Both Hirizjahkinis and Aruendiel started, then looked around quickly for the source of the noise. “Well, at least you heard that,” Nora said.
Eyes on the bench, Aruendiel nodded. “Interesting.” He held out his arm. “Here, Nora. Pinch me. Hard.”
Pleased to have attracted some attention, Nora groped at his sleeve. “I can’t get a good grip,” she said. The thin black wool felt both slippery and insubstantial under her fingers. “All right—there.”
“Harder!”
“You asked for it.” Grimacing, Nora squeezed her thumb and finger together, pinching what might have been a fold of Aruendiel’s flesh, although it did not exactly feel that way. “That has to hurt.”
“I feel nothing at all,” Aruendiel said. He rubbed curiously at a wrinkle on his sleeve, and Nora felt a vague, blunted touch on her hand. “There is a numbing component to the spell, it seems,” he said. “I think, Nora, if you were to bludgeon me with something large and heavy, I would be aware of that. Otherwise, your touch is imperceptible.”
“I figured that out already,” Nora said. “Although I’ll remember the part about the bludgeoning.”
“Be careful what you suggest to Nora, Aruendiel,” Hirizjahkinis said. “She may be getting very irritated with being invisible.”
“Oh, yes,” Nora said as Aruendiel rolled up his sleeve. On his sinewy forearm, under the lace of coarse black hairs, were two reddening spots. She winced a little when she saw them. “Ouch. I’m sorry.”
“Very interesting,” Aruendiel said. “The flesh is harder to deceive.” He rubbed the red spots thoughtfully.
“You did pinch hard, little one,” Hirizjahkinis said. “But it is nothing that Aruendiel does not deserve.”
“I’ve had worse injuries,” Aruendiel said. “Listen, Nora. This is an old and very complicated spell—”
“Olenan said it was her father’s.”
“—and I think it is the same one she used to use, long ago, to conceal herself—and me, sometimes—when we traveled in unfriendly countries. She did not teach it to me, and I was too green to unravel it. I can only guess at where and when Olenan learned it.
“Because it is partly a misdirection spell, which is a kind of unluckiness curse, it can twist and thwart your will and the will of others. Mostly to lead you away from those who might detect your presence. But it also means that an improperly chosen counterhex could make the spell stronger.”
“Great,” Nora said. “Does that mean we can’t even try to take it off?”
“Nora, when Tuthl Nes put a misdirection spell on me, I thought that I would never get rid of it,” Hirizjahkinis said. “I was completely lost in Anjorabal for a month. Fortunately, the weather was lovely.” She grinned, her dark eyes glinting. “A spell like that, you have to trick. You do not march away thinking, ‘At all costs I must get back to the port immediately.’ You have a nice breakfast, and then you stroll among the dunes, and look at the ocean, and you think, ‘I wonder if the port is this way? No, I do not think so.’ Then you admire the jessem flowers, and walk a little further, and suddenly you are at the port.”
“I would like a vacation like that,” Nora said. “Does that mean I should just think about something else for a while?”
“I sometimes wonder, Hiriz, whether you ever shed that misd
irection spell completely,” Aruendiel said. “But I must take more time to study this invisibility spell. The library here is not extensive, and it is poorly organized, but there are a few volumes that may be of use.”
“The library mostly has healing spells,” Nora said. Of course, being invisible, especially when you didn’t want to be, might be considered a disease of sorts.
“I will find the right counterhex soon or devise one,” Aruendiel said. “Have courage, Nora.”
“And it is not a terrible thing for you to be invisible right now, anyway,” Hirizjahkinis said. “At least until those greedy, silly priests have left. The fat one looked so disappointed that he could not bring you to justice for all the crimes you have committed.”
“The fools,” Aruendiel said. “They will not touch Nora, visible or invisible. I will make sure of that.” Abruptly he gave a snicker of dour amusement. “You saw—the cowards would not even venture here without two and a half dozen of the Ghaki king’s men to protect them from the heretics of Erchkaii.”
“If I were you, little one,” Hirizjahkinis said, “I would go see if those holy men can feel your invisible pinch any better than Aruendiel can.”
They were trying to cheer her up, Nora thought. It almost worked.
Chapter 36
The next day Nora decided to see for herself what the library held in the way of books on invisibility and its cure.
When she entered, there were several scrolls and a thick bound volume open on one of the desks. Aruendiel had been here already, probably last night, but he was absent now. The unluckiness part of the spell kicking in, she thought. She leaned over the desk to see what he had been reading.
One scroll was a treatise on the anatomy of the eye, a second dealt with magical cures for blindness, and the third was in a language she didn’t know, but it had alarming illustrations of human figures with misshapen animal limbs. The open book was about ways to induce madness. Aruendiel had been making notes on a wax tablet in his tight, jagged script, apparently working out a counterhex to one of the insanity spells.
Nora picked up the stylus. Do you think I’m mad? she wrote. I am starting to wonder, myself. I am here, but I am not here. You are so close, but I can’t reach you. I wonder if you will even be able to read my note.
She spent some time examining the library shelves. On the far side of the little octagonal library, where she and Oasme had rarely ventured, she found a shelf full of scrolls recording what seemed to be case histories. Some of the notes were in Ors—badly or archaically spelled, but mostly comprehensible. She made her way through one scroll and actually found a case that involved invisibility: a pilgrim who wanted to be made to vanish because of hideous deformities. She left the scroll on Aruendiel’s desk with another note.
Nora wandered outside and took the river path. By habit she followed it up the Stairs of Healing and along the bottom of the ravine, running her hands over the carved walls. Prayers and praise to a goddess who was more of a mystery to Nora than ever. The damp, ferny shade here was appreciably cooler than the sunnier, more exposed hospital complex. Summer was not far away, she thought. How long had she been here? The yellow and red wildflowers that now lit the banks of the stream looked tough and grassy, ready for long hot days.
Hearing voices, Nora turned to see Lemoes and Yaioni walking behind her on the path, their heads together. She slowed and drifted near them.
“—decided not to rebuild the temple in the old place,” Lemoes was saying. “There will be a shrine closer to the hospital. The architect comes from Nenaveii tomorrow or the next day.”
Yaioni sniffed. “The old temple was too wet and musty. Uliverat said that it made her joints ache.”
“And it was a long way from the hospital for the sick pilgrims to come.”
“They don’t care about the sick pilgrims! It is just money.”
“Want to know the real reason?” Lemoes grinned shyly. “They are afraid of the giant snake. I saw their faces when they heard it swallowed the High Priestess. Afterward, Erefex said that it was dangerous to disturb the old gods, and he sent a letter to the High Priest in Nenaveii this morning.”
“But the snake didn’t eat the High Priestess!” Yaioni’s eyebrows arched with indignation that anyone might expect her to believe such an obvious falsehood. “The magicians told us that a spell made her invisible. Although they might have lied,” she added reflectively.
“Well—” Lemoes looked slightly abashed. “I think they would rather let the Nenaveiians believe the High Priestess is dead.”
“Do you think she is dead? Or invisible?”
“I don’t think she is dead,” Lemoes said. He was silent for a moment. “Some of the pilgrims on the ward say that they have seen strange things. Not really seen them, exactly, but they feel that someone is nearby, and then their pain is gone.”
Yaioni gripped his wrist. “Do you know what some of the ganoi are saying?”
“What?”
“That she was the goddess, the real one. While the other one was pretending.”
Lemoes frowned blankly. “Wait, the High Priestess, the one called Nora, was really the god—”
“Yes, that is what I am telling you. The ganoi say that the real goddess came to earth to get rid of the liar goddess, and she did, and then she disappeared.”
“You’re kidding,” Nora said.
“No, that is not true,” Lemoes said. “I know it’s not true.”
“Oh, yes, you know because you are such good friends with the goddess,” Yaioni said dismissively. “She comes to visit in the middle of the night.”
“No,” Lemoes said slowly. “Not anymore.”
Yaioni raised her eyebrows. “She is angry with you? Or—perhaps she has found someone else.”
Lemoes shook his head. “It’s not her will to come to me. Not now.” His tone was guarded.
“Oh.” Yaioni gave him a long look. “Well, I was only telling you what the ganoi say. They are very ignorant.” She pointed ahead. “You see the altar? All those flowers and the food? More than we ever had in the temple before! Did you put it there? Or is it all from the ganoi?”
If anything, the altar in the middle of the river was more lavishly decorated with offerings than it had been the day before.
Lemoes shook his head. “I only brought a few wickflowers. Well, they are doing honor to the goddess—the real goddess,” he added with a slight emphasis. “This is still her holy place. Holier than it used to be, even.”
“I will be glad to leave it.” Yaioni gave an exaggerated shiver. “I am tired of these people who might be goddesses, or not. If Nora is the goddess, I would be vexed to worship her.”
He laughed, then asked, “When are you leaving?”
“As soon as Lady Munthos is well enough to travel.” That was one of the pilgrims recovering in the hospital, Nora recalled. “I will be her nurse all the way to Thallaas and perhaps farther,” Yaioni went on. “Then I would like to go to see my son. He is six now, I think. He was only a baby when I left. I want to be his mother again. Before he turns into a man.
“I suppose my husband will try to kill me, but—” She shrugged. “I know a little more about the arts of power than I used to, and I am sure he is still an idiot. And you? There is no reason for you to stay here. It is a wretched hole.”
It was Lemoes’s turn to shrug. “I pledged that I would stay here all my life. When the High Priest spared me at Falis Woana.” He glanced at Yaioni. “That was before you came here.”
She curled her lip. “Ah, you were one of those prisoners, too? Sent by the king? That’s what Uliverat always said, but I did not believe her—she thought everyone was a criminal. Did you do something very bad?”
“Yes, I did,” Lemoes said gravely.
“But you must have been very little!”
“I was old enough to keep watch, e
ven if I wasn’t old enough to strike the blows. My brothers did that.”
Yaioni waited, but he said nothing more. “The priests won’t care about your promises to the goddess,” she said finally. “They will still want you to go to Nenaveii.”
“It won’t happen.” Lemoes’s eyes were fixed on the white streak of the waterfall ahead. “She won’t let it happen.”
Yaioni made a noise in her throat that could have been either sympathetic or exasperated. After a moment, they turned and retreated down the path. Nora didn’t follow them. Instead, she waded through the shallow rushing water to the improvised altar.
It was banked with the red and yellow wildflowers and some branches of white blossoms. Under the flowers was a layer of greasy black ashes and burned bones. There were bowls of milk and a cloudy amber liquid—beer, Nora established with a sniff—and an earthenware dish of wild strawberries.
Nora tasted one of the strawberries. It was not quite ripe.
She let herself contemplate the possibility that the invisibility spell would never wear off or be removed. That she would remain a voiceless phantom doomed to eavesdrop on the real life going on all around her.
I would make a better fake goddess than Olenan, Nora thought. I wouldn’t kill my followers. I wouldn’t even ask very much of them. They could believe whatever they wanted. I would help them as much as I could, with magic or in other ways, and look after them, and in return I’d survive on their offerings and the satisfaction it gave me to know that I was doing good.
She pictured herself explaining to her younger sister that she was now a goddess, or at least working as one. Ramona wouldn’t buy it for an instant.
And Erchkaii didn’t need another fake goddess, anyway.
Nora splashed back to the stream bank and gathered her own armful of the red and yellow blooms. She left them on the altar and did a spell to send ghost flames licking over the offerings, the fire caressing and brightening the flowers without blackening them. Gold and crimson petals flickered and danced in the still air.
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 46
